“Per quel giorno che l’amor mio” è il 63esimo sonetto che appartiene alla raccolta “Sonnets”, costituita da 154 sonetti, elaborato dal drammaturgo e poeta inglese William Shakespeare. A differenza degli altri componimenti, l’autore non specifica esplicitamente il destinatario dell’opera. In questa poesia, il poeta esprime tutta la sua preoccupazione sull’influenza inevitabile del tempo sulla bellezza del suo amore. Egli immagina che la bellezza del giovane, a livello estetico, purtroppo, svanirà quando diventerà vecchio, “sgualcito e logorato” come Shakespeare. Addirittura, il tempo prosciugherà il sangue del suo amato e solcherà di linee e di rughe il suo bel viso. Questo sonetto evidenzia il frantumarsi delle immagini dovuto agli effetti del tempo. L’autore, tramite metafore, paragona la bellezza giovanile alla ricchezza, mentre la vecchiaia e la morte alla notte. L’amore profondo dell’autore per il giovane amante rimane il tema dominante di questo sonetto, in cui esalta la bellezza...

The plot In this comedy, the main characters are : King Alonso: king of Naples; Ferdinand: king Alonso's son; Prospero: he is a magician and lives on a desert island, where he does different illusiones such as a tempest. He was Duke of Milan, but he lost his dukedom because of a plot set up by his wicked brother, Antonio, together with Alonso; Ariel: a spirit and Prospero's attendant; Miranda: Prospero's daughter. She remembers nothing about her past but she knows his father was once the Duke of Milan; Caliban: a sort of half-man, half-beast because he was initially a companion to Miranda, but, then, rebelled against Prospero's authority and became his servant. King Alonso's ships are shipwrecked on a desert island because of a tempest. All are saved except Ferdinand, who has disappeared. The tempest is raised by Prospero , a magician and the master of island, with the help of his attendant spirit, Ariel. With Prospero there is his daughter, Miranda, who has grown u...

The plot The play is set in Verona. Juliet is the daughter of the head of the House of Capulet and Romeo is the son of Lord Montague. Montagues and Capulets are bitter enemies. Juliet's father plans to give her hand in marriage to Count Paris. One day, Romeo secretly takes part in the party given by Lord Capulet, disguised in a mask. So, Romeo meets Juliet and they fall in love. Next day, Romeo and Juliet are secretly married by Friar Lawrence, a friendly priest. In the same day, Romeo gets involved in a quarrel in which his friend Mercutio is killed bu Tybalt, Juliet's cousin. In revenge, Romeo kills Tybalt and, for this reason, is exiled to Mantua. Meanwhile, Juliet's father orders Juliet to prepare for her marriage to Count Paris. In order to escape, she takes a drug given her by Friar Lawrence. She fall in a death-like trance and the priest will warn Romeo, who will come from Mantua and rescue her. Rushing back to Verona, he meets Paris outside Juliet's tomb; they f...

William Shakespeare was born on 23rd April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire. His father belonged to the corporation of glovers and was Bailiff of Stratford; his mother came from an important country family. In his youth, he probably attended Stratford's Grammar School because the knowledge of Latin, Greek and rhetoric emerges in his plays . When he was 18 he married Anne Hathaway and they had three children. At this time is probably that he decided to go to London to work in the theatre because of some economic problems. By 1592 Shakespeare was active in London as an actor and playwright. He achieved a reputation as a poet for his mythological works: Venus and Adonis and The rape of Lucrece . Shakespeare was also defined, together with The Sonnets , lyrical poet. He became the first member of Lord Chamberlain's Men , one of London's leading companies of players (after the accession of James I the company took the name King's Men ). Then, he excelled in all t...

Hello everyone! Oggi tratto una delle tragedie più significative di Shakespeare ed uno dei casi più ecletanti di femminicidio nella letteratura inglese: Othello.  Nel seguente link pubblico una recensione in powerpoint su questa opera teatrale. Cliccare qui 👇. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NPg2hWHutTUoXf6Fk4H4SNLiT9eSFGcq/view?usp=drivesdk

The plot The king of Denmark is dead. Queen Gertrude has almost married the dead king's brother Claudius. The dead king's son Hamlet, prince of Denmark, meets his father's ghost on the battlements of Elsinore Castle; the ghost tells his son that Claudius is guilty of his murder and asks Hamlet to take revenge. Hamlet pretends to be mad in order to gain time and observe the behaviour of king and queen. The king's confusion seems to confirm the ghost's revelation: king Claudius is guilty of murdering Hamlet's father. However, Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius, king's adviser and Ophelia's father (Hamlet's lover). Ophelia doesn't understand Hamlet's behaviour. She, thinking he doesn't love her anymore, goes insane and drowns herself in a river.  Laertes, Ophelia's brother, swears revenge and challenges Hamlet to a duel in throne room. King Claudius manipulates Laertes to carry out his own plan to murder Hamlet: he creates two poisoned s...

Women and love The central theme of Shakespeare's tragedies is the obsessive desire for love and power. In this type of play Shakespeare's heroines have an active role. Juliet, who loved absolutely Romeo, found the strenght to oppose her parents and relatives. Women and power In the eternal struggle for power that goes on in world history and everyday society, Shakespeare's heroines don't display stereotyped femal behaviour. For example, in Macbeth , Lady Macbeth isn't a complement to her husband, but rather the driving force of the play; she has a deeply desire for power. Shakespeare stresses this aspect of her personality, often, making her wish she was a man. Fathers and daughters Shakespeare's daughters aren't weak submissive creatures, despite the social conditions which dictated that women were legally bound to their fathers or husbands. For example, in King Lear , the daughter openly defies her father's authority, refusing to admit her love for hi...

The collected edition of Shakespeare's plays came out in 1623, after the poet's death. This first edition is traditionally called The First Folio , which contains 36 plays  sorted by literary genre: comedies, historical plays and tragedies. In according to plays, we may divided Shakespeare's career into four periods: the years of apprenticeship; the history plays and love comedies; the great tragedies and the dark comedies; the romances. In the first phase he experimented with all the major dramatic genres: history plays: they treat events of English history ( Henry VI , Richard III ); tragedy of horror: he took as a model to follow Seneca's Latin tragedies (an example is Romeo and Juliet ); refined love comedy ( The two gentlemen of Verona ). In the second phase of his career, Shakespeare wrote the history plays and the love comedies. Shakespeare's history plays treat politics as an eternal struggle for power, love and property. They set in a crucial period of Engl...

The sonnet was introduced to England by a group of Court poets during the reign of Henry VIII. They translated or adapted it from Petrarch, whose Canzoniere was the   model for Renaissance poets. Most 16 th   century sonnet collections are addressed to to the mythical lady of the Petrarchan tradition: a woman who is both real and ideal, full of the highest physical and spiritual qualities. A great technical innovation by English Renaissance poets was to change the metrical structure of the sonnet from Petrarch's pattern (two quatrains and two tercets) to the so called Elizabethan sonnet (three quatrains and a couplet). Thus, they created the pattern which was later adopted by William Shakespeare and, for this reason, they were called Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet. One of the most representative Renaissance English poets was William Shakespeare. Most of Shakespeare's sonnets were written between 1593 and 1598 and had as addressee the young Earl of Southam...